Conor McGregor was a surgical scalpel, Nate Diaz was a railroad tie and Wednesday’s news conference to formally announce and promote their fight at UFC 196 was one for the books.
Before we discuss any further, let’s take this opportunity to handle a small piece of business. Let’s do a little housekeeping. Let’s go ahead and take the MMA trash talk crown away from Uncle Chael P. Sonnen or Ronda Rousey or whoever previously wore it in your household, and place it atop the sandy brow of McGregor.
(Warning: Video contains NSFW language.)
He didn’t do anything outlandish at the UFC Gym in Torrance, California. He didn’t grab Diaz’s microphone and throw it into the crowd or anything like that.
But after he swaggered to the podium more than half an hour late for the big media to-do, he touched his sparking cable of internal energy to his wit and braggadocio and let the voltage fly for all current and potential opponents, the UFC and anyone else who wanted some.
But Diaz, in his way, was equal to the challenge—maybe more so than any of McGregor’s other opponents in this position in the UFC to date.
They both did it with a heaping dose of great trash talk’s core ingredient: plain, old candor.
It began with the featherweight champ hurling epithets at Rafael dos Anjos—whose injury withdrawal from his lightweight title defense against McGregor led to this March 5 welterweight bout, which Diaz took on less than two weeks’ notice—and others who were potential replacements but didn’t ultimately sign the contract.
But soon enough he laid into Diaz, saying it was also a struggle to entice Diaz into the bout.
“Even Nate tried to exit the fight,” McGregor said. “You know, there was many discussions. The first discussion was the money issue. We resolved the money issue. Then, it was ‘He could only make 160 [pounds].’ So we gave him 160. Then, he came back, ‘He could only make 165.’ So then I told him to get comfortable. You can step on the scales at 170 and that’s it, we’re going to go and fight, and that’s it. I look forward to it. It’s what the fans want.”
There’s a reason why the UFC’s YouTube stream of the conference had well over 100,000 viewers at this point. McGregor was just getting warmed up. It got personal right off the bat.
“He’s like a little cholo gangsta from the hood, and at the same time he coaches kids’ jiu-jitsu on a Sunday morning and goes on bike rides with the elderly,” McGregor said. “He makes gun signs with the right hand and animal balloons with the left hand. You’re a credit to the community.”
Conor in prime form pic.twitter.com/VJgXSD9dIT
— caposa (@GrabakaHitman) February 24, 2016
Diaz, a noted man of the people and dedicated athlete all year around, probably took some of that as a compliment.
Either way, he was prepared in that markedly unprepared way of the Diaz brothers. No, they’ll never win a Nobel Prize, but the best thing about the Diaz brothers’ trash talk is that they’re not trying too hard. McGregor tries—that’s indisputable.
So that’s what makes Diaz’s smack talk stand out in a way. Well, that and the fact that it never gives any inches.
Diaz stuck to his own piece of truth: He has a longer UFC tenure than McGregor (which is true, with Diaz’s 21 fights to McGregor’s seven). He also pointed to the difference in size, suggesting that McGregor had “only beaten midgets.”
His biggest salvo was the (baseless) accusation that McGregor was taking steroids. And when McGregor literally jumped up out of his seat to deny it and (correctly) accuse Diaz’s teammates Jake Shields and Gilbert Melendez of failing drug tests, Diaz calmly picked up his microphone, looked McGregor in the eye and said, “You’re on steroids.”
Now, no one has any proof that that’s actually true. And, again, this isn’t stuff you’d hear on the cocktail circuit. The point is, Diaz verbally struck for a nerve, and he struck it.
Was it just me or was McGregor a little defensive in his next answer given in response to a question about his training ritual?
“I wake up, I work, I eat and I sleep,” he said. “That’s it. Nothing else. All day work.”
— caposa (@GrabakaHitman) February 24, 2016
That’s the way it went. McGregor with his elaborate, expletive-laded, well-researched slams. Diaz with his five-word, expletive-laden, blunt-force returns. McGregor getting more animated when the emotions ran high. Diaz lapsing into sullen silence.
Finally, the reporters asked them both how they thought the fight would go.
McGregor paused for a moment, held the microphone close and leaned forward on the table toward the reporter who asked the question.
“I feel his repetitive foot patterns are too repeatable, too predictable,” McGregor said in a quiet voice, his brogue in full lilt. “He’ll be too slow in there. The speed will stifle him. His soft body and his lack of preparation, he will not be able to handle the ferocity, so end of the first [round], I feel, he’ll be put away.”
To that, Diaz responded.
“Yeah, it’s either kill or be killed,” Diaz said. “That’s what I’m coming with.”
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